


[Fandom stats] Omegaverse: Which characters get tagged most often with specific A/B/O roles?

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [90]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 11:08:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: Across all of AO3, which characters appear most often in A/B/O works?  Which are tagged most often with a specific role, using a tag like "Alpha [character name]"?  Who are the most common female A/B/O characters?





	[Fandom stats] Omegaverse: Which characters get tagged most often with specific A/B/O roles?

**Author's Note:**

> This post, and related ones, are also available on my [Tumblr](http://toastystats.tumblr.com). You can view just the images at optimal resolution on [Imgur](https://imgur.com/a/FCimo).

Which characters most often appear in the "Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics" tag on AO3 -- and what specific roles are they most often tagged with? I decided to find out by doing a tag search on AO3 for all canonical tags of the format "Alpha [name]", "Beta [name]", or "Omega [name]", and looking at every character with at least 100 fanworks in one or more of those categories. Where there were multiple tags -- e.g., "Alpha Derek" or "Alpha Derek Hale" -- I used the larger one. Where there was any ambiguity about the fandom involved for a given name, I limited it to the largest fandom.

Okay, so first, let's just look at totals, without breaking it down by role -- who gets tagged the most with an A/B/O role, overall? 

[](https://imgur.com/DUC4xeF)

Note: for most of the above characters, I didn't explicitly force the works to use the "Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics" tag; "Omega Sherlock Holmes" almost always implies that the story takes place in the Omegaverse. However, because of werewolf pack role ambiguities, for the Teen Wolf fandom, I ruled out all works that didn't use "Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics" or a subtag. 

**Edit** : It turns out the above graph is missing some Yuri on Ice characters, and probably more, who fit the criteria. Maybe because AO3 Tag Search is in beta? Not sure. But if you don't see characters you think should be there, you're probably right that they're missing! 

Some of the above characters may be showing up because they're really popular on AO3, rather than being especially popular in the Omegaverse. So let's sort the characters by what percent of the works they appear in tag them with an A/B/O role: 

[](https://imgur.com/e3SBAEx)

Fascinating! What's up with Castiel? Well, probably part of it is that the Supernatural fandom has been around for ages -- since before there was an Omegaverse -- but Castiel is a somewhat more recent character, so he doesn't have all those works from back before A/B/O was a thing, like Dean and Sam do. But we can also see from the overall numbers in the first graph that he does get tagged a lot, in absolute numbers. (If anyone in the SPN fandom knows any other likely reasons for this, please comment!) Somewhat less surprising are Jensen and Jared showing up high in the rankings; the A/B/O trope actually first emerged in Supernatural RPF fandom. 

Also probably unsurprising, given the predominance of M/M in Omegaverse fics: Natasha Romanov, a very popular character on AO3, is relatively unlikely to get tagged with A/B/O roles. We'll return in a bit to female characters who make an appearance in this AU. 

Okay, so which characters most often are assigned the Alpha role in A/B/O fics? 

[](https://imgur.com/RNGpMys)

~~Bucky Barnes is apparently the only character in this set that nobody ever envisions as an Alpha (unless they're tagging those fics differently).~~ The previous statement was due to a data gathering error; graphs have been updated to reflect actual Bucky stats! :) 

If we sort characters [from most Omega to least](https://imgur.com/IOijn11), we get almost the inverse of this ranking. However, the Beta role shows a quite different ranking: 

[](https://imgur.com/JGEXOoZ)

I find it really interesting to see which characters are most often Betas, but I don't have any good theories about why any of this is the case. (Feel free to share yours!)

Okay, so back to the topic of female characters. They appear _much_ less often in Omegaverse, to the point where I could only find 12 female characters with canonical A/B/O tags. Some of this just may be due to the limitations of AO3 tag wrangling system -- the volunteers who wrangle AO3 tags have limited hours in their day, and haven't yet canonicalized a lot of the smaller tags that aren't as popular as the really huge ones above. And the amount that they have wrangled also varies by fandom. So don't be surprised if a bunch of female characters are missing that you know you've seen in A/B/O fics. 

**Edit:** not only is limiting to canonical tags only causing me to miss a bunch of female characters, but it seems I even managed to miss some canonical tags (as with the Yuri on Ice characters missing above). Alpha Rey and Omega Rey are both tags I initially missed. I've updated the graph now to include Rey, but there may still be a bunch missing. 

[](https://imgur.com/1Cwpmbm)

Because these numbers are so small and subject to large variations due to noise, I didn't look at percent of the character's overall fics that were in the Omegaverse. However, I did break each character down by specific A/B/O role. Please take these ratios with a liberal grain of salt, given the small numbers involved. 

[](https://imgur.com/TFjkUvu)

That's it for now; hoping to post more soon about the frequency of different pairing types (e.g., Alpha/Beta) and more. I also have older stats about [Omegaverse general trends](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/59371807212/its-time-for-fandom-stats-omegaverse-edition-in) from several years ago, as well as [Omegaverse in the Sherlock fandom](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/99424121089/omegaverse-in-the-sherlock-fandom), if you're interested!

**Author's Note:**

> General feedback about this post, as well as sharing of info from various fandoms, is welcome. Please veer away from yelling in the comments about lack of female characters, or other representation issues in A/B/O fic; I don't have capacity to fix those things, and yelling stresses me out and makes me hesitant to share stats. I encourage you to have those conversations on your own blog/twitter/etc, if so inspired!


End file.
